European Kingdoms

Barbarians

Uralics

Uralic is a broad language family which covers wide areas of modern
Northern Europe
and Siberia. Daughters of Uralic languages are still spoken in
Estonia and
Finland,
by many smaller groups that are located across
Russia, and with
one southern offshoot,
Magyar, in
Hungary. In more
detail, its spread includes the northern forests of Eurasia, from the
Pacific shores of north-eastern Siberia (Nganasan, which is spoken by
tundra reindeer herders), to the Atlantic and Baltic coasts (the
aforementioned Estonians and Finns, plus the absorbed
Kvens (Kainu)
and Sámi - usually shown in English text as Sami or Saami, Karelian,
Vespian, and Votian).

Most linguists use the tree model to divide the family at the root into
two super-branches: Finno-Ugric (the western branch), and Samoyedic
(the eastern branch). A counter-argument states that this division is
based more on tradition than solid linguistic evidence, but the
alternative 'flat' division of the language leaves nine branches in
place of the two, otherwise known as the wave model. The latter school
of thought also sees Finno-Permic languages having a much more distant
relationship (if any) to Uralic (Tapani Salminen argues intelligibly
for this school). The tree model works best when people speaking a
language become isolated from each other. So geographic or cultural
isolation or a sessile lifestyle works best for tree models. The wave
model works best for societies that intermingle constantly and have
heavy social contact, so that trends in speech get copied across a
large range. Therefore the wave model would be best applied to steppe
dwellers (such as
Indo-Europeans),
and the tree model to forest dwellers (such as Uralics). That said, both
models can be applied to any language that is breaking down into dialects
and separating. It's merely a question of degree.

More pertinent was finding a proto-Uralic homeland, a subject that has
been fraught with problems. Thankfully a general consensus does seem
to have been reached amongst most scholars. In fact, much of the work
of locating the proto-Uralics has been done by pinpointing the homeland
of the proto-Indo-Europeans (PIEs), a question that in the past has been
equally problematical but which also seems to have achieved a general
level of consensus in recent decades. The early speakers both of PIE and
proto-Uralic lived in a world of tribal politics and social groups which
were united through kinship and marriage. However, unlike the PIEs, the
proto-Uralics did not accept the arrival of animal domestication in the
late sixth millennium BC. It took them at least three thousand years
longer to begin to domesticate animals.

If the proto-Indo-European homeland can be accepted as having been located
on the Pontic-Caspian steppe (the broad swathe of territory to the north of
the Black Sea and Caspian Sea), then it's easier to pinpoint the proto-Uralics
as well. The one question of any serious merit that remains is whether the
core Uralic homeland was on the eastern or western side of the Ural Mountains.
Either seems possible, and trying to track back through various Uralic
dialectal splits does not help. The only reason for preferring the western
side of the Urals here is due to interaction with the PIEs, who most
definitely were located on the western side. The proto-Uralic speakers have
been identified as being neighbours of the PIEs through words and morphologies
borrowed between PIE and other language families. It's a little risky to
discuss borrowing between two proto-languages, especially when neither has
survived in any written form, but once a phonological system has been
constructed for each language (and experts have been working on this for
the past couple of centuries) then it does become possible to identify
roots which are of similar form and meaning. By far the strongest language
linkages can be seen between PIE and Uralic.

Although the evidence is almost invisible in the surviving daughter languages,
there is the possibility that both languages - PIE and proto-Uralic -
originated in a very distant and broad set of primitive language stocks
which could be termed 'Eurasiatic' (a term coined by Joseph Greenberg). Some
common words are still very similar today, such as mama/ema
(English/Estonian). The PIE version of this word also exists in proposed
proto-Celtic as *mammā-, while the Estonian form descends from the
proposed proto-Uralic *emä. Proto-Uralic could also have existed in a late
post-Eurasiatic form, known as pre-proto-Uralic, on both sides of the Urals.
This is argued on the basis of early contacts with the Yukaghir languages
which are now spoken only in two small corners of the Russian far north-east,
in the River Kolyma basin.

The homeland of proto-Uralic was therefore probably in the forest zone which
was centred on the southern flanks of the Ural Mountains. The arguments for
a western or eastern side of the mountains can largely be laid aside because
almost all Uralic linguists and Ural-region archaeologists seem to agree
that proto-Uralic was spoken somewhere in the birch-pine forests between the
River Oka on the west (around modern Nizhny Novgorod (formerly Gorky), which
river feeds into the Volga) and the River Irtysh on the east (around modern
Omsk). As foragers, the proto-Uralics would have drifted into the eastern
side of the mountains too - after all, they were not tied down by herds or
farms. Today, the Uralic languages spoken in this core region include, from
east to west, Mordvin, Mari, Udmurt, Komi, and Mansi, of which two (Udmurt
and Komi) are stems on the same branch (Permian).

As if to contradict the above, recent genetic testing of living peoples,
and ancient remains, are pointing in a slightly different direction from
the standing Caucasian Mountains origin for Indo-Europeans, and this
impinges on the origins of the Uralics. Males carry and transmit via their
Y chromosome the history of male migration, critical for tracing the
movements of warrior societies. Indo-European Y chromosomes carry two
primary 'flavours', called R1a and R1b by geneticists. R1a is found
strongly in Slavs, Balts, and
Indo-Iranians,
and is mixed with R1b in
Germanic-speaking
peoples. The geographic distribution in ancient times for R1a is European
Russia just west
of the Ural Mountains. What we have is an origin in the Russian forest
and forest-steppes for half the Indo-Europeans (those linguistically
matching the satum branch of Indo-European languages, and occupying
half the territory previously assigned to Uralics). It remains to be
seen whether this DNA-based theory will supersede the established
linguistics theory.

(Information by Peter Kessler, with additional information by Edward
Dawson, and from The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age
Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World, David W
Anthony, from Early Contacts between Uralic and Yukaghir, Jaakko
Häkkinen (2012), from the Proto-Celtic English Wordlist, from
Uralic Evidence for the Indo-European Homeland, Jaakko Häkkinen
(2012), from the Encyclopaedia of Indo-European Culture, J P
Mallory & D Q Adams (Eds, 1997), from On the Edge of the World,
Nikolaĭ Semenovich Leskov, and from External Link:
Problems in the taxonomy of the Uralic languages in light of modern
comparative studies, Tapani Salminen (2002 - dead link)).)

c.5000 BC?

The
reconstructed proto-Uralic vocabulary suggests that its speakers live far
from the sea, in a forest environment. They are foragers (another way of
saying hunter-gatherer) who hunt and fish but who possess no domesticated
plants or animals except the dog. This correlates well with archaeological
evidence that is bracketed into the Lyalovo culture of the same period,
a centre of cultural influences and interchanges amongst forest-zone
forager cultures.

The ancient forest at the foot of the southern Ural Mountains
would have emerged after the end of the most recent Ice Age -
the River Belaia in the southern Urals is shown here -
and soon provided a home to the foraging humans who became the
proto-Uralics

The proto-Uralic language (or group of languages) shows a division that
later emerges as proto-Samoyedic and proto-Finno-Ugric. Reconstructed
proto-Finno-Ugric contains few differences from proto-Uralic, and
proto-Uralic after this period gains several loan words from
proto-Indo-European
(PIE). General opinion has the proto-Samoyedic-speakers dividing first,
and later Samoyedic languages do not contain the PIE loan words that
Uralic languages contain. So it seems the proto-Samoyedics soon begin
a migration northwards and eastwards, into Siberia, leaving the remaining
proto-Uralics where they are.

Only about two hundred words of proto-Uralic can be reconstructed for the
period prior to this split, and it may be the case that there isn't a split
at all. One theory opposed to a shared origin is that the two groups could
neighbour one another close to the Ural Mountains rather than being
components of a single group. This theory has proto-Samoyedic speakers
borrowing proto-Uralic words prior to the migration and comparative
isolation thereafter (to produce the grammatically-conservative Samoyed
vocabulary). The issue is still very much up in the air, despite previous
certainties.

c.4500 BC

In this period Uralic languages show the aforementioned very early contact
with
Indo-European languages (PIE), which can be interpreted in three main
ways. Shared words include the ancestors of 'water' (in English) and 'vesi'
(in Estonian) which have been reconstructed as *wete in proto-Uralic, from
*wed-er/en' in PIE ('water, river'). Another is the word 'name' and 'nimi'
in the same languages, originating in a reconstructed *nime in proto-Uralic
from PIE *h3neh3mn'. The first way of interpreting these very fundamental
words - the Indo-Uralic hypothesis - is to state that they must be inherited
at a very early stage, probably before the appearance of the proto languages
in the fifth millennium. Instead they can be ascribed to a 'grandmother'
tongue.

The second way - the 'early loan' hypothesis - is to argue that the shared
roots must be later or they would exhibit greater degrees of sound shift
across the centuries. Instead they can be explained as loan words from one
language to the other. In this case the loan words would have been from
PIE to proto-Uralic, because forager groups do not loan words to farming
groups. It is always the other way around (give or take the odd surviving
forager relic word). The third theory - the 'late loan' hypothesis - argues
for a much later loan date which post-dates the Indo-European migrations
and the formation of its daughter languages. This theory is easily
dismissed.

3300 - 3100 BC

To the immediate south of the forest domain of the proto-Uralics lies the
Pontic-Caspian steppe. At this time the
proto-Indo-European
people there are undergoing great social changes. The relatively new sight
of horse-drawn wagons creaking and swaying across the grasslands of the
steppes amid herds of woolly sheep changes during this period from one
of weird fascination to a normal part of steppe life. At about the same
time the climate in the steppes becomes significantly drier and generally
cooler than it had been during the Eneolithic. The shift to drier conditions
is dated between 3500-3000 BC in pollen cores in the lower Don, the middle
Volga, and across the northern Kazakh steppes.

This primitive wagon was unearthed at Lchashen, on the western
shore of Lake Sevan in modern Armenia in the South Caucuses, but
the style would have been very similar in the North Caucases and
on the steppe

Bigger pastures and a mobile home amongst the emerging Yamnaya groups lead
to bigger herds. Amid the ensuing disputes over borders, pastures, and
seasonal movements, new rules are needed to define what counts as an
acceptable move. People begin to manage local migratory behaviour. Those
who do not participate in these agreements or recognise the new rules become
cultural outsiders (mostly foragers to the north of the steppes which
includes the proto-Uralics). The proto-Uralics themselves may be stimulated
by this cultural explosion, or forced further afield by it, outwards from
their ancestral forest homeland into new territories to the north and
north-west.

c.3000 BC

The
spoken range of proto-Uralic language begins to expand. With the
proto-Samoyedic speakers already long having shifted away from them, groups
of proto-Uralics now begin a drift northwards and westwards, towards the
Barents Sea and the Baltic coastline. Others remain largely where they
are as the ancestors of, from east to west, the Mordvin, Mari, Udmurt,
Komi, and Mansi groups.

It is also around this time that the Finno-Permic group of languages divides
from Finno-Ugric. Despite the validity of Finno-Permic being questioned in
recent times, it is still highly useful as a definition. Ugric itself (named
after Yugra, a region in northern-central Asia), remains consolidated until
the early centuries of the first millennium BC, before developing into Khanty,
Magyar, and Mansi.
Khanty and Mansi are largely considered to be one language with distinct
dialectal divisions. During this time Ugric populations occupy territory
between western Siberia and the Ural Mountains.

Moving in the opposite direction, the Comb Ceramic culture reaches
Prussia,
Estonia and
Finland as new peoples
arrive here from the east, almost certainly the Finno-Ugric tribes who form
the later core of Finland and Estonia. This includes Estonians, Finns,
Karelians, Livs, Wots, Weps,
and Ingrians, whilst leaving behind a large swathe of Finno-Ugric tribes
across northern Russia.

The pottery of the Comb Ceramic culture (also known as Pit-Comb
Ware) - a widespread cultural expression of far north-eastern
Europe's foragers between the Baltic Sea and the Ural Mountains
- shows the typical comb imprints that gave the its name

This Neolithic culture seems to form on the basis of the previous Mesolithic
cultures, but uses a greater variety of bone, antler and stone implements,
and employs boring, drilling, and abrading skills. Proto-Lapponoid skeletons
from this period have been found by archaeologists, showing that the Mesolithic
blended Mongoloid/Europeans live alongside the new arrivals and bear a certain
similarity to Siberian Finno-Ugric peoples (of the Samoyed division of
Ugric-speakers). It has been suggested that they originate around the region
of Lake Ladoga and disperse over a wide area.

Comb Ceramic culture brings with it pottery but no farming, which is unusual
by this stage of European history. Most migratory people have picked up at
least the basics of farming and animal husbandry, the latter now primarily
focussed around the horse (for mobility) and sheep (for wool). In large areas
of Europe pottery had come with farming via its Anatolian/Greek feeder route,
the Sesklo culture, but the people of the Comb Ceramic exhibit older influences
from farther east, with farming not yet having been adopted at all.

after c.2500 BC

Proto-Uralic
people begin to domesticate animals. As this is well after the core migration of
proto-Indo-Europeans
(PIE) and the formation of its daughter languages - therefore rendering
proto-Indo-European itself a dead language - no loan words for farming can
be borrowed from PIE. However, the proto-Uralics have already borrowed an
odd assortment of words prior to the PIE migration, including 'to wash,
price' and 'to give, to sell', probably through a trade jargon used by the
two groups in former times. They may also be influenced by
proto-Indo-Iranian
through the still extant Poltavka Bronze Age culture of the middle Volga.

c.2000 BC

Around
this time the Finno-Permic group of languages further divides into the
Finno-Volgaic and Permic languages. Proto-Uralic languages between the
Ural Mountains and western Siberia now experience some expansion (this
date being considerably later than previous views of proto-Uralic expansion).
Speakers of the many various groups of proto-Uralic daughter languages
still follow a largely peaceful existence. In general they remain
untroubled by conquerors and invaders for the next three thousand years,
and only briefly intrude upon written history in that time.

The upper Volga basin to the west of the Urals - roughly midway
between Ryazan and St Petersburg in modern Russia - has been
occupied by modern humans since at least 14,000 BC

During this same period, and later too, Finno-Ugrics living in the
neighbourhood of the Balts
become to a certain degree Indo-Europeanised. Over the course of several
millennia, particularly during the Early Iron Age and the first centuries
AD, the Finno-Ugrian culture in the upper Volga basin and north of the
River Daugava-Dvina becomes adapted to food production, and even the
habitat pattern - arranging villages on hills and the building of
rectangular houses - is borrowed from the Balts.

AD 100s - 400s

Between
the second and fifth centuries AD the material standards of the
Baltic culture rise tremendously,
due to intensive amber trade with the provinces of the
Roman
empire. Archaeological finds demonstrate how for centuries bronze and iron
tools and ornaments are exported from the Balts to Uralic-speaking
Finno-Ugrian lands. The western Finnic, the Mari, and Mordvin areas are
flooded with or strongly influenced by ornaments that are typical of the
Baltic culture.

Where the long history of Baltic-Finno-Ugrian relations is concerned, language
and archaeological sources go hand-in-hand, and Baltic loan words into
Volga-Finnic languages pay witness to this. However, the Baltic golden age
begins to fade from around the end of the fourth century or in the early
part of the fifth century, as eastern Slav expansion reaches the Baltic
lands in what is now western
Russia.
The gradual influx of Slavs continues right up until the twelfth century and
onwards, also impacting greatly upon Finno-Ugric groups too.

565

The
Hephthalites
are defeated in
Kushanshah South Asia (now within
Afghanistan)
by an alliance of the
WesternGöktürks
and the
Sassanids. The Western Göktürks set up rival states in Bamiyan,
Kabul,
and Kapisa, strengthening their hold on the Silk Road from a viceroyalty
which is based in
Tokharistan. However, their empire barely infringes upon the vast
northern territories of the Finno-Ugrics and Samoyedic-speakers.

As was often the case with Central Asian states that had been
created by horse-borne warriors on the sweeping steppelands, the
Göktürk khaganate swiftly incorporated a vast stretch of
territory in its westwards expansion, whilst being hemmed in by
the powerful Chinese dynasties to the south-east and Siberia's
uninviting tundra to the north (click or tap on map to view full sized)

Great Khagan Mukhan himself is responsible for securing the khaganate's
borders against the last of the Rouran, and defeating the Khitan (founders
of the later
Qara-Khitaï
empire) and the Kyrgyz people. In the far west the empire now counts amongst
its vassals the Khazars and the
Magyars. The latter
are (or now become) horsemen who are based in the Pontic-Caspian steppe,
seemingly serving as auxiliaries of the Khazars.

But these Magyars are far from typical
Turkic
mounted warriors (the Turks themselves have partially
Indo-European roots). It is generally accepted that this name, 'magyar',
is a compound that is made up of the indigenous denomination of the Voguls
and Ostiaks and a Turkish word meaning 'man'. The Magyar tribal confederation
seems to comprise eight tribes, of which at least six have names of Turkish
origin. They speak a Uralic language which is ultimately related to
Finno-Ugric. By the end of the ninth century, they migrate into
Hungary,
probably after having lived for some centuries amongst Turkic-speaking
tribes.

600s

The
Finnic-speaking tribes of the Baltic coast are beginning to change. They have
recently begun to enjoy a period of relative wealth and prosperity earned
through strong trading contacts with the heart of Europe, notably with the
court of the Ostrogothic
king of Italy, Theodoric
the Great. This extends equally to their neighbours, the tribes
of the Balts (such as
Lats and
Lithuanians). Around this
time, the Ungenois people of southern
Estonia erect a fortress by
the name of Tarbatu
on the east side of the Dome Hill (Toomemägi - approximately where the
Astronomical Observatory now stands). Presumably this is in response to
an external threat, probably to their newly-acquired wealth.

This map shows a host of the many petty Norwegian kingdoms in
eighth and ninth century Scandinavia, most of them arranged
along the coastline, although penetration into the interior
is clearly beginning (click or tap on map to view full sized)

Farther north, the Sámi group of Finno-Ugric speakers is still pursuing
its traditional hunter-gather mode of living, although now these tribes
are coming into contact with Norse traders along the coast of
Norway.
Trading posts crop up, usually during the summer, but in time these turn
into permanent posts and then minor kingdoms, such as that of Finnmark in
the northernmost reaches of Norway.

1186

The
Danes are busy
securing their hold over North
Estonia
while the rest of the Baltic region is undergoing the same process from the
south. What is now Estonia and Latvia quickly come to be governed by
German
prince-bishops in
Courland,
Dorpat,
Ösel-Wiek
and, governing the heart of later Latvia, the prince-bishop of
Riga. The
Livonian Order of
Knights conquers the rest of what is now Latvia and central Estonia.
The captured territory between Danish Estonia and
Lithuania becomes known
as Livonia.

During this period, important ethnic changes are taking place among the
peoples of the Baltics. Within the confines of Livonia, the fusion of the
local Balts into one people
begins their development into today's Latvians. The assimilation of the
Finno-Ugric Livs or
Livonians also begins, although they manage to leave their mark on
Latvian language and culture.

2016

Uralic-speaking groups still exist and can be readily identified. Over
time, mainly through migration and external circumstances, the main body
of Uralic speakers has split into two divisions - the Finno-Ugric peoples
who are located largely, but not completely, to the west of the Urals, and
the Samoyedic peoples who are located largely, but not completely, to the
east of the Urals.

Of those two divisions, the western one is itself divided into two main
branches. The first, the Finnic group, has four sub-divisions of its own,
these being the absorbed Sámi, the highly fragmented Baltic Finns, the
Volga Finns, and the Permians (who are located on both sides of the
northern Ural Mountains). The second main branch is the Ugric one. This
consists of the Ob-Ugric peoples (the Khanty and Mansi), and the
Magyars.

Finno-Ugric Permian speakers initially occupied the upper and
middle River Kama before dividing into two branches at some
point in the 700s-900s AD and expanding eastwards from there -
today's Udmurt branch still live in their ancient homelands (and
contain a surprising number of redheads)

The
Sámi cover northern
Scandinavia
- originally a pre-Uralic indigenous people who have absorbed and adopted
a Finnic tongue. The Baltic Finns include
Estonians,
Finns, Ingrians
(between modern Estonia's River Narva and
Russia's Lake Ladoga),
Karelians (mostly in the Russian republic of Karelia, between the Baltic
Sea and the White Sea, bordering the Finns to their west), Livonians
(southern Estonia and northern
Latvia), Vepsians
(generally south of the Karelians and east of the Ingrians, with the
Permians lying to their east), and Votians (immediately east of Estonia). The
Volga Finns include the Mari (largely located along the Kama and Volga rivers
and in the Mari El republic, all in modern Russia), and also the Mordvins
(partially of Russia's republic of Mordovia), who themselves are subdivided
into the Erzya (eastern branch) and Moksha (western branch), and many smaller
groups. The Permians (formerly known as Bjarmians) include the Komis (once
known as Zyrians) and Udmurts.

The eastern division is the Samoyed group. This exists largely in Siberia
and is made up of the Northern Samoyed (the Enets, Nenets, and Nganasan, all
in wide swathes of territory along the coast of the Kara Sea), and the
Southern Samoyed (the Selkup - the most easterly group of Ugrics), plus the
Sayan Samoyed who no longer exist).